Sarah Silverman's not kidding this time — maybe

Still, it can be hard to tell with someone who is as sunny and polite in person as she is when she is in character

March 24, 2011|By Christopher Borrelli | Tribune reporter

If it walks like a Sarah Silverman (with a loping, gawky, adolescent gait, even now, at 40), and talks like a Sarah Silverman (“I don't care if you think I'm racist. I just want you to think I'm thin”), it must be ... confused at the moment. These are complicated, contradictory times for fearless stand-up comedians: Consider the Aflac duck, which walked like a duck, and sounded like a Gilbert Gottfried — until Gottfried tweeted tasteless jokes about the disaster in Japan, and sounded a little too much like Gilbert Gottfried.

What's a sunshiny beacon of provocation to think?

Silverman, who is performing Saturday at the Chicago Theatre, one of her first stand-up shows outside of Los Angeles in years, has never been confused with the sensitive. “I am never upset about someone taking me the wrong way,” she said in a phone interview from her Los Angeles home. “Comedy is subjective. But that I get uniformly labeled ‘offensive,' that I am the textbook example, it upsets me.”

Because onstage she plays a persona, of cheerful obliviousness. What she does not play is willfully insensitive — her character never realizes how offensive she is. But that is a thin, subtle line in a coarse, knee-jerk culture — a line made thinner by Silverman herself, as sweet and unfailingly polite in person as she is onstage saying horrible things about gays, African-Americans, Asians or insert-ethnicity-here.

Or as Todd Jackson, editor of the stand-up comedy news blog “Dead Frog,” put it, “Everything she seems to do is refracted through character, so she's reluctant to do interviews. It's a magician's approach to stand-up, which is don't give away too much. That's valid, but it leaves her vulnerable.”

Q: In real life you seem hard to read. Your persona, this kind of oblivious person who says horrible things, is so sunny. And you're sunny. Do everyday people know how to talk to you?

A: My friends do. But it's funny how people will think I'm being sarcastic a lot and joking. So I'll say, “I like your dress,” and they'll go “(bleep) you!” Or I say something serious and they go, “Oh, yeah, ha-ha.” They're strangers. They're people who know me from comedy, but luckily I am on pretty much all the time!

Q: Years ago I interviewed you and remember coming away thinking I didn't know you at all at the end of the interview. I couldn't tell if you were honest or in character or just really guarded.

A: It all depends on my frame of mind. Sometimes I am screwing around, and sometimes I get way too serious, but I am a pretty sincere person. Which is weird to say, because it's like when someone says, "I'm the kind of person who ..." No, you're not. When I said I'm sincere it sounded like the kind of person I hate.

A: Well, I know how to write. So I am not totally at the mercy of filmmakers, but it's not a bad point. I'm lucky a couple of filmmakers have seen beyond what you're saying. You want the actors to disappear into roles and stay under the radar, and that gets harder when someone is known for their actual personality, or who they seem to be. I don't know if I were casting a movie I would want that. I can't fight it. Still, the things they often want me for are the sassy friend, the one who doles out the exposition from (bad) writers — "But if you don't marry him right now you won't get a part of the will!" The dark-haired friend. The Jewish part, basically. But I'm lucky because I intentionally keep my overhead low, and so I can say, "No, thank you."

Q: I heard you still live in a ridiculously small apartment.

A: A small apartment? I'm looking at it right now. It's four rooms. Yeah, it's really small. But it's nice. I don't need a lot of space. I own my Saab. I'm not wanting and I don't live in a hovel, but if you keep your costs low, you can do what you want to do creatively. I can get a script and go, "Well, I'd rather do stand-up." I don't hold movies in higher regard. I love making videos and posting. I love TV. We live in a fun time with so many ways to express yourself, you would be crazy to be a comedian and not check them all out.

Q: Does your Twitter feed count into that for you?

A: Yeah. It's a great way to try jokes. Some comics think you burn jokes there. But I like trying jokes and seeing the response, and if I end up doing it in my act, it won't be 140 characters. It's helpful that way to me. It's like a message in a bottle. But a lot of times I think I tweet the stuff I would like to say to teenage me.

Q: Yesterday you tweeted: "The good news is hopeful doesn't mean dumb. The bad news is cynical doesn't mean smart." That sounds like something an adult might remind a teenager.